Have you already created a list of goals for 2025?

When you do, I urge you to include at least one goal that not only relates to Creation but stretches you.

It’s traditional to create goals that relate to our personal health, professional goals, and hobbies. We may even have goals that relate to how we develop our faith, like committing to reading the Bible over the course of a year or praying each morning (which I recommend).

But I don’t often hear people develop goals that relate to doing our part for God’s precious earth.

If you believe that Creation matters to God, then embrace that conviction and turn it into sustained action that stretches you. As Jesus tells us in the story of the wise builder and the foolish builder, one’s faith is not real without putting it into action.

One example of a stretch goal would be committing to significantly increase your purchases of local, organic, and regeneratively grown food. This will be healthier for you and your family. It will also support good stewards of God’s earth and send a signal to our food and farming system about what kind of agriculture people want.

Another example would be to apply your love of God to your yard, farm, or even your business facility’s landscaping. Expand the amount of area that provides sustenance to birds and bees in the form of native vegetation. Treat your yard or farm as if it was God’s (which it is) and as if God cares about the life of this earth (which God does). Then enjoy the life that will come.

Why not commit to increasing the giving your family makes to Creation protection and renewal causes?

You could move your family or your church to more renewable energy sources.

You could decide to volunteer on a regular basis to restore a local natural area or to help a nature conservation organization. You’ll meet good people and learn a great deal about Creation.

Perhaps, you could even plan to organize people you know to address a Creation-related issue. This might include preserving a  natural area threatened with development or prompting your local school district to offer meals to its students with healthy foods.

Pray about it. Listen to what stirs your heart and mind.

Write it down.

And plan out the first few steps.

Then act.

The hardest part is getting going. Inertia is a killer.

When it comes to moving past inertia, here’s a video that my wife and I found useful. The speaker shares five tips for how to increase your odds of actually achieving your goals for a year. Good stuff. We plan to apply these principles this coming year.

You may be wondering what my 2025 goal is for Creation. One is to launch a podcast as a complement to this blog. There are so many Christians who are caring, tending, and defending Creation in courageous and creative ways. I’d like for you and people like you to hear their stories. I also want to explore the theology of Creation with theologians and other thinkers. I would like to explore the marvels of Creation, from new discoveries about the soil biome to the social lives of killer whales. And I want to talk with people who can give you and me insights into how to better live out our whole faith in connection to Creation.

Why is this a stretch?

Well, I am not good (in other words, I stink) at technology. I’m also quite busy with my work for The Land Connection, a food and farming non-profit. How will I fit this in? Do I want to inflict my voice on innocent people?! And, if I am honest, I will say that I feel a bit of reticence (In other words, fear) at doing something so new and different.

But it feels very right.

I started this blog 10 years ago because I literally couldn’t not do it. There were ideas and questions and convictions I couldn’t just let continue to boil in my heart and mind. They were going to explode if I didn’t express them and address them. Over the course of the last 10 years, I’ve learned a great deal that has further bolstered my convictions, my love of God, and my appreciation for Creation, even as it has also made me hurt even more to see what is being done to Creation. The best part has been hearing from people like you who appreciated particular blog posts. I have realized I am not alone. You are not alone.

I feel the same pent-up energy for podcasting.

You’ll be the first to hear once I get it going.

I’d love to hear what your goals are, too.

I hope and pray you will have a year of abundant life and whole faith in 2025.

P.S. And don’t forget to get to enjoy Creation in 2025 with your loved ones. Hike, Birdwatch. Study plants. Read books about it. Grow some of your own food and cook with it!